es and lawful
authority, Lulu, I insist that you shall be more amenable to them.

"I believe you think that when your father and grandpa are both away you
can do pretty much as you please; but you shall not while I am about. I
won't have my mother's authority set at defiance by you or any one
else."

"Who wants to set it at defiance?" demanded Lulu, wrathfully. "Not I, I
am sure. But I won't be ruled by you, for papa never said I should."

"I think I shall take down this conversation and report it to him,"
Edward said, only half in earnest.

Lulu turned quickly away, greatly disturbed by the threat, but resolved
that her alarm should not be perceived by either him or Zoe. Walking a
few yards from them, she sat down upon the sand and amused herself
digging in it, but with thoughts busied with the problem, "What will
papa say and do if that conversation is reported to him?"

A very little consideration of the question convinced her that if
present her father would say she had been extremely impertinent, punish
her for it, and make her apologize.

Presently a glance toward the cottages on the bluff showed her Violet
and Grace descending the stairway. She rose and hurried to meet them.

"Mamma Vi," she said, as soon as within hearing, "I am ever so sorry to
have frightened you so last night and given you a headache. But you
oughtn't to care whether such a naughty girl as I am is drowned or not."

"How can you talk so, Lulu dear?" Violet answered, putting an arm round
the child's waist and giving her a gentle kiss. "Do you think your Mamma
Vi has no real love for you? If so, you are much mistaken. I love you,
Lulu, for yourself, and dearly for your father's sake. Oh, I wish you
loved him well enough to try harder to be good in order to add to his
happiness; it would add to it more than anything else that I know of.
Your naughtiness does not deprive you of his fatherly affection, but it
does rob him of much enjoyment which he would otherwise have."

Lulu hung her head in silence, turned, and walked away full of
self-accusing and penitent thoughts. She was not crying; tears did not
come so readily to her eyes as to those of many children of her age, but
her heart was aching with remorseful love for her absent father.

"To think that I spoiled his visit home," she sighed to herself. "Oh, I
wish he could come back to have it over again, and I would try to be
good and not spoil his enjoyment in the very least!"

"Come